Robots are often used to reduce or eliminate human labor, and provide increased speed, efficiency, and profitability. For example, a warehouse environment may be stocked with a large number of items for sale, spread over a potentially large area of the warehouse. As orders for items are received from customers, the ordered items are retrieved from their respective locations within the warehouse, for packing and shipping to the ordering customers. This process may be time-consuming and labor-intensive.
Robots may be used to retrieve the ordered items in an efficient and cost-effective manner. For example, mobile robots may be equipped to traverse the warehouse environment, locate at least one rack that is storing at least one ordered item, and transport the rack(s) and item(s) to a designated location. At the designated location, the gathered items may be packed into containers corresponding to individual orders, and shipped to the ordering customers.
In practice, however, it may be difficult to realize the desired advantages of deploying robots in these and similar environments. For example, if the robots transport an unnecessarily large number of racks for packing of associated items, a total time to completion may be unacceptably long, and time and resources may be wasted.